JavaScript differences between IE 11 and Edge?

Hello

Using Design Studio, the following JavaScript was added to AP20.1 to retrieve the Requester for a PO. When run in IE 11 (in default Edge emulation mode) on Windows 7, it runs successfully - the count shows that 1 record was retrieved and the vRequester variable is set to the Requester from the database. When run in Edge on Windows 10, the count also shows that 1 record was retrieved, but vRequester is always blank.

     var strPDL = portalWnd.oUserProfile.getAttribute("productline");
     var s = https://server + portalWnd.DMEPath;
     s += "?PROD="+strPDL;
     s += "&FILE=POLINESRC";
     s += "&INDEX=PLSSET1";
     s += "&KEY=" + parseInt(CoNbr,10);
     s += "= =";
     s += escape(PONbr);
     s += "&FIELD=REQUESTER";
     s += "&OUT=XML&DELIM=~";
     var sReturn=portalWnd.httpRequest(s);
     var vObjDMEXML = new portalWnd.DataStorage(sReturn);
     var vRecords = vObjDMEXML.document.getElementsByTagName("RECORD");
     var count = vObjDMEXML.document.getElementsByTagName("RECORDS")[0].getAttribute("count");
     if (count > 0) var vCols = vRecords[0].getElementsByTagName("COL");
     var vRequester = vCols[0].firstChild.data;

Any ideas as to why this is working in IE but not Edge is greatly appreciated.

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Comments

jreese

I know we had to go through some changes when we switched from IE to Chrome. The one difference I see on what is in my code than in yours is on your var sReturn, in the parentheses instead of just s we have portalWnd.DMEPath + s. I am not sure if that is a change and will resolve your issues or not.

plancor

jreese, thank you for the response. I changed the sReturn to "var sReturn=portalWnd.httpRequest(portalWnd.DMEPath + s);" but now it's producing an error on this line (in IE, Edge, and Chrome). Maybe I misunderstood your suggestion? Would you be able to provide a snippet of your code that does a similar variable retrieval?

don-peterson

I checked with our Design Studio developers and here's what I got back:

Have they run the custom content migrator in portal? It should give them some suggestions for how to fix some of these things.

99% of the time issues like this are because ‘.firstChild’ on non-IE browsers can refer to whitespace in between XML nodes, but in IE it skips those.

developer.mozilla.org/.../firstChild

They could try to see if ‘.firstElementChild’ works? I’ve never seen that but noticed it on that MDN page and it sounds like it could work. If not they could make a function that gets passed an XML node, loops node.childNodes and returns the first one that has a nodeType of 1 developer.mozilla.org/.../nodeType

plancor

Thank you for the response Don. I'm not sure how to run the custom content migrator. Could you please point me in the right direction for documentation on this function?

don-peterson

There may be documentation on InforXtreme, however, I was born too early to know how to effectively search for things on that Web thing.

Here are the steps from one of my User Group presentations:

- Go to the Portal Administration Home page

- Select Custom Content Tool

- Migrate Custom Content will come up

- Select Custom Script from the Analyze drop down

- Click Analyze

- It will display the results with Warnings to check out in red

Attachment_4486.zip

plancor

Thank you, Don. I ran the analysis and it identifies problems. However, I'm struggling to figure out how to solve them. This is what the analyzer says:

inspecting script: /content/forms/ap20.1.xxx.xml

- ActiveXObject is only usable in Internet Explorer. Consider replacing it with a browser neutral solution. - occurrences found: 2

- Processing XML nodes using ".firstChild" may not work in all situations. Use the "DataStorage" object documented in the Object Viewer of Design Studio. - occurrences found: 4

It would be really awesome if there was an example of how to change use of .firstChild to the suggested DataStorage object referred to in the analyzer (or other solution). I have not been able to get .firstElementChild to work.

unknown

Hi,

I had the same issue! Don't use the firstChild.data method. It's not compatible with modern browser Java Script. Use childNodes[x].data instead. You may need an else statement for IE 11 as shown. Below is an example using GM65.2 with the returned XML. Hope this helps!

var vObjDMEXML = new portalWnd.DataStorage(vDMEInfo);

var vRecords = vObjDMEXML.document.getElementsByTagName("RECORD");
if (vRecords.length > 0) {
var vCols = vRecords[0].getElementsByTagName("COL");

// JTC 11/1/2018, Fixed to use text property for ie 11 and data property for chrome
if (vCols[0].childNodes[1] != null)
sCertDate = vCols[0].childNodes[1].data;
else // ie
sCertDate = vCols[0].text;

lawForm.setElementValue("_f109", sCertDate, 0);

}

don-peterson

More from our developers:

Regarding the firstChild stuff, looking at the result of a similar call they’re getting something like this:

So it looks like they’re trying to read that CDATA section in the middle there. If you look at the response without formatting you see this:

That COL node has blank lines on either side of the CDATA section, otherwise it’d be:

<COL><![CDATA[1-req]]></COL>.

So as a result checking the childNodes in Chrome of that element shows this:

The firstChild a text node containing that first blank line between <COL> and <!CDATA…

In IE, childNodes/firstChild etc doesn’t include ‘text’ nodes like that, which is why it works there.

The Object Viewer in Design Studio documents a DataStorage method called “getElementCDataValue()”, I’ve attached a screenshot of that section of the documentation. For this case they would want to do something like:

var vRequester = new portalWnd.DataStorage(vRecords[0]).getElementCDataValue('COL', 0);

plancor

Don and JimC, thank you! I was able to successfully change the javascript code using the Object Viewer DataStorage method "getElementCDataValue" within Design Studio as described in Don's post. Happy Friday!

Dr. Awesome

I'm looking forward to Edge on Chromium coming out in mid-Jan. IE11 is slow and unsafe and dead. I've been using the Edge beta version for months and Microsoft finally got something right.

Edge on Chromium will be made available back to Windows 7. On Windows 10, Microsoft will not even ship IE anymore. There is a "IE mode" though, per domain/site. The new Edge subsumes the old Edge.

I just read that Safari is likely moving to Chromium too.

Good hunting everyone.

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